Emmanuel Logan ’13 collects textbooks that URI students don’t want and ships them to Liberia where it’s common for many university students to share one book.
“In Liberia the government doesn’t care about its people,” said Logan, a 2013 graduate of URI’s Alan Shawn Feinstein College of Continuing Education who fled war-torn Liberia as a child. “There is no aid for college, no access to education and no running water. The government kills its own people. There is so much in this country, so much to appreciate. My life has turned around. Mother would be proud of me – very proud.”
The last time Emmanuel saw his mother, he was a child and watched rebels drag her from their home for speaking out against recruiting child soldiers to fight the country’s civil war. Six months later, he and his eight siblings discovered their mom had been raped in her prison cell and murdered.
With his Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies from URI in hand, Emmanuel’s next big idea is to study public policy at graduate school in the fall, possibly at URI in Kingston, and become an advocate for social justice. “With hard work and focus you can achieve anything you want in life,” he said.
He’s a living example of his own philosophy. After fleeing from Liberia to the Ivory Coast and then Ghana, Emmanuel moved to Providence in 2007 to live with Liberian refugees. He received political asylum and, eventually, became a permanent resident. Soon after arriving in the United States, he started work as an aide in a group home for adults with learning disabilities, working his way up to assistant program manager. He hasn’t had a vacation in five years and usually logs 80-hour workweeks.
“This is a young man who in the face of adversity broke down barriers that would have prevented others from moving forward,” said Gayla Gazerro, financial aid and scholarship advisor at the Feinstein Providence campus. “We can expect great things from Emmanuel in the future.”
The Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies program is designed for people who want to keep working while earning a degree and Logan took out loans to pay tuition. He hopes to return to Liberia and help those in need, specifically women, who are treated as property of men. “They are abused on a daily basis,” he said. “These are the things still crippling the Liberian society.”